


The Wrong Side

by dragonofdispair



Series: Towards Light [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Decepticon Medics, Implied/Referenced Dubcon, M/M, PTSD, Referenced Blood Drinking, Referenced Bloodplay, References to Medical Experimentation, hematolagnia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-23 23:41:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14343417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair
Summary: Young, innocent, and already traumatized from the Combiner experiments, Ambulon spends some time at a MASH unit on the front lines, where sniper fire and artillery shells aren’t the only dangers he has to navigate.





	The Wrong Side

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** Decepticon medics, Deadlock, bloodplay, dubcon of the can’t-refuse-a-superior-officer-variety, nothing graphic but Ambulon sees some things he wishes he hadn’t…
> 
> Beta’d by Rizobact.

_I've been to the back side of hell_  
_And I've played with your fear and enjoyed it well_  
          ~ Abney Park, [The Wrong Side](https://youtu.be/abiXhS7iQ84)

♪♬♪♪

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The speedster was sleek, dark and utterly confident as he moved into the room. He walked like he owned the whole MASH and the crowd clustered near the energon dispenser parted around him like minnow-bots around a lazily circling sharkticon. He had the sort of frame that practically enticed wandering fingers closer, and the sort of look in his optics that warned that anyone who didn't respect his space would find themselves missing those fingers.

"Take an image capture," a cheerful voice came from the vicinity of the floor and Ambulon looked down to see Glit looking up from his bowl. "It'll last longer."

"I'm not staring." Ambulon hissed back. It was true, he had been _very_ careful not to stare. Staring was dangerous. It attracted attention, and if there was one thing Ambulon _didn't_ want, it was attention from the officer corps. He got enough attention from the science division, the thoughts of which haunted his nightmares already. It was only the desperate need for medical staff that had allowed him to escape them for a while, and he knew that when the fighting lulled and priorities turned, he'd be back on Shockwave's table. "Who is he?"

Glit cocked his audials and hopped up on the bench to look over the table at the officer who'd caught Ambulon's attention. His felinoid companion had been here at the MASH longer than Ambulon had, and knew most of the units stationed at the nearby Polyhex/Iacon border. He wrinkled his nasal sensor. "That's Deadlock. You want to stay away from him."

"Deadlock?" Ambulon may not know the names of nearly as many Decepticon commanders as he should, but that was a name he did know. "Megatron's current favorite? Shouldn't he be stationed someplace… safer?"

"I wish," Glit jumped back down to the ground, to the dish of energon set there. "He's got a type, and it goes badly for us whenever he's here. Conduit's the only one who actually likes him."

Ambulon shivered. Conduit was one of the medics stationed here at the MASH, and Ambulon already knew he was pretty much crazy. He was an exceptional doctor — all of them were — but he was insane. A Mortilus worshiper. Ambulon had been warned it was just easier not to ask what happened to the corpses.

Ambulon let his gaze wander over to where Conduit was sitting, alone, of course. He looked like a dark speedster himself, though his alt was a large, black ambulance rather than a sports car. You couldn’t see the telltale right angles of that alt form in his primary form though, which was all sharp angles and graceful curves. If he was Deadlock's type, it was unlikely Ambulon had anything to worry about.

"I mean it," Glit said when he saw where Ambulon was looking now. "Stay away from him."

"I'm not," he made a gesture under the table where Glit could see it, sketching out Conduit's much sleeker, spiky frame.

"Flatline's his favorite right now," Glit said, "but he's not picky about which of us he grabs. He likes _medics,_ Newbie, and he will chew you up and spit you out if he gets a chance. Literally."

Ambulon shivered. That… did not sound like he was safe, even if he wasn't a classically pretty frame like Conduit. Neither was Flatline. Just a box on wheels.

Only, he thought a bit hysterically to himself, he didn't _have_ wheels.

He didn't like the thought that he was _naive._ But the gestalt R &D facility had been familiar. Safe, in its own way. His days were filled with inevitable pain, staring up at Shockwave's impassive optic, but it had been familiar. It was the stuff of nightmares, but Ambulon hadn’t known anything else until being shipped to the front.

Here, mere miles from the fighting at the border, Ambulon was constantly surprised by all the things that could kill him. Mortars rained down on the surrounding countryside all night, shaking thin prefab walls and interrupting recharge. Or, at least it interrupted his recharge. In the medics' barracks, Ambulon had found himself hiding underneath his berth more than once, while the other four snoozed almost contentedly. There were uncleared minefields less than a mile from the MASH, and Autobot snipers regularly took potshots at the mechs within. Nor were they, any of them, safe from the ebbs and tides of violence within the Decepticons themselves. Most mechs were reluctant to do _too_ much harm to a mech who might be conducting triage later, but that didn’t stop those who were too out of it from their injuries, or too dull in general, to make that connection. It also didn’t stop those who felt secure enough in their position they felt they could do anything.

Doing his best to blend into the rowdy crowd jostling for places in the commissary, Ambulon took his cube over and dropped it off at the window where the kitchen staff would whisk it away to be cleaned.

“Hey good lookin’!” Someone called out as he was leaving and Ambulon froze. Peeking over his shoulder, he watched Deadlock eel through the crowd toward him.

All the stories he’d heard about what it felt like to be… forced, all the bragging he’d heard about acts that reminded him uncomfortably of Shockwave’s sadism, flashed through his mind. It was with mingled relief and shame that he watched Deadlock pluck an unresisting Flatline out of the crowd.

“Gorgeous,” Deadlock purred, somehow loud enough for Ambulon to hear over the din of the room and over his own racing fuel pump. Flatline murmured something in return, and Deadlock laughed.

Relief and shame and laughter nipping at his heels, Ambulon fled.

Flatline skipped his shift and Scalpel covered for him without comment. He came back late that night, in the hours of pre-dawn light when the snipers were most active. Ambulon tried not to look too afraid of the spats of gunfire and loud whoops and crashes that meant someone — or several — had gone out there on a sniper hunt. Conduit was recharging as normal, but Glit was also waiting up, and Ambulon hadn’t quite managed to get the nerve to ask why when Flatline returned.

He looked tired and worn in a way that reminded Ambulon of triple shifts of surgeries without a second’s rest and of poking and prodding as scalpels and tools of all sorts filed away at him in an effort to get him to connect to the mech Shockwave had picked as his newest gestaltmate… the fourth, and the echoes of broken bonds clawed at his mind as they were all tested to destruction…

Glit’s voice shook him from the waking nightmare. He was guiding Flatline to the berth and pushing a full cube of energon into his hands, before checking his fuel levels.

He didn’t want to know. He wasn’t going to— “What happened?” Ambulon asked.

Both the other medics turned suddenly to look at him, like they’d forgotten his cowering form was there.

“Deadlock,” Flatline answered, the same way those nameless gestaltmates would utter the words _stress testing_ in the science facility. “He likes biting.”

Biting? Even with the fangs many Decepticons sported, a Cybertronian wasn’t exactly capable of inflicting a lot of damage with his teeth. Beastformers could, in their terrifying alternate forms, savage a mech terribly, but not in primary form—

Silently Flatline held out his wrist, sliding a panel of his armor aside to reveal the substructures beneath. There were two neat puncture marks, right on the primary energon line in his arm, still sluggishly oozing energon. Ambulon stared at them, not understanding their significance. Yes, he could see very well that they were caused by a pair of Decepticon fangs. There were faint marks around the punctures where the mech’s other teeth would have pressed against the soft, vulnerable metal.

Glit hissed and yanked Flatline’s arm away so Ambulon couldn’t see it any longer. “You _idiot,”_ the feline hissed. “You should have a patch on those!”

“I wanted you to look at them first,” Flatline replied while Glit fussed. “He’s been taking fuel from the fallen again, and I don’t want them infected.”

 _Taking fuel…_ the bitemarks, and what they _meant_ finally clicked in Ambulon’s processor. “He’s a siphonist?” A vampire?

“I suggest you don’t call him that, when it’s your turn,” Flatline said flatly. “Or instead of a single bitemark, he’ll rip off your arm.”

“Flatline…” Glit growled warningly.

“Newbie needs to know what he’s getting into,” the other medic hissed back.

Eventually, the two of them — Flatline and Glit — collapsed into the same berth, curled up together in a way that made Ambulon twitch uneasily, and left him unsure what about the sight made him uncomfortable. There was a feeling in his tank that felt like hunger, but he knew he was witnessing something he couldn't talk about. He tried not to dwell on it. The sounds of mayhem from outside were dying down and maybe he could get a few minutes recharge before he needed to be up.

Ambulon took Glit’s advice and did his best to avoid Deadlock. It wasn’t easy; the mech seemed to be everywhere. Stalking through the hallways, lounging in the commissary, even — once — prowling through the medical ward, exchanging quiet words with the patients while he hunted for the medic on duty.

Lurking around the edges, trying to remain unnoticed by one mech while being imposing, _threatening_ — controlling sedative and painkiller code doses, master of triage — to others at the same time was a strain. He heard things, things he was sure he’d heard before, but now was extra sensitive to. He retreated to the little room just off the recovery ward where medical codes were programed to be distributed, so the patients wouldn’t see his reaction to their talk.

“…dn’t let him overload for three whole _hours.”_ The mechs leaning eagerly toward the speaker to hang off his every word went _“Oooooh!”_ Deadlock laughed, congratulating the mech for his prowess in the berth. Ambulon couldn’t help but shiver. It was an effort not to be sick to his tank right there.

The conversation went on while Ambulon stared at the screen and pretended to work. All he could hear were Shockwave’s whispers. Overload. _Stress testing._ To force a mech to endure that for _that_ long, just for one’s own amusement… In his memory, he screamed, clawing at the ground, the berth — his own plating, until Shockwave had chained him down so he wouldn’t damage himself trying to release the sparks from beneath his own plating, while a machine plugged into the five ports on his spine slowly increased the voltage—

“Hey, medic!” Ambulon was jerked out of his reverie by Deadlock leaning on the doorframe.

“Yes, sir?” He hoped his voice didn’t shake too much.

“That gearstick over in berth number three?” Deadlock gestured behind him, and Ambulon nodded to show he understood. “Don’t give him anymore painkiller. He’s faking now. Gotta cut him off.”

Ambulon didn’t know what to do. His medical coding said the mech was injured and shouldn’t be left in pain, while survival programming insisted that obedience, _submission,_ was the best course of action.

“I mean it,” Deadlock growled, showing his teeth in a threat display.

Optics riveted on the points of Deadlock’s fangs decided him. “Yes, sir.” And just like that, he became a torturer as well.

Threat display turned to a no less threatening smile. “Good mech.” Red optics swept over Ambulon’s boxy form, evaluating and hungry. “Don’t think I’ve seen you here before, gorgeous.”

Ambulon made some sort of excuse and fled.

Those two little punctures on Flatline’s wrist, Deadlock’s fangs, haunted him. Siphoning. Fuel drinking… Ambulon shivered every time he thought about it. The thought that Deadlock was _fueling_ from the other medics as part of his, his _entertainment_ didn’t make Ambulon feel any less like prey.

His nightmares blurred together. Chased and caught and bitten by Deadlock became screaming while electricity coursed through him under Shockwave’s impassive optic. Chased and caught and bitten by Shockwave became screaming as Deadlock laughed, claws drawing out sparks from armor and protoform… bleeding, bleeding, bleeding.

Ambulon was no sneak. One of his early maybe-gestaltmates had been. He’d been a left arm. The sinister hand, as he’d chuckled in the deep, shadowed hours between experiments. Ambulon couldn’t remember his name, just his whispers, his screams, and how he’d managed to slip into shadows, blending into corners or the crowds of other subjects so well he might as well have not been there. He remembered and he tried to use what that dead, broken bond whispered to him about going unnoticed and tried to ignore how that same bond _screamed_ at him of the mech’s final moments, flayed apart by Shockwave’s claws for being good enough he thought he could escape… Ambulon’s own mind, his own memories, whispered the inevitability of being caught.

He resorted to staying away from the MASH’s main pathways. He went to the commissary at odd hours, circled around the outside of the prefabs, risking sniper fire to stay out of sight. He traded shifts with the others, giving no explanation for why he wanted to.

It worked, until it didn’t.

Someone bumped him while he was returning to the main supply room with an armful of freshly cleaned spare parts from the battlefield and sent the whole box of them flying all over. Ambulon himself went sprawling into the grime and rust. The mech who’d bumped into him — a large tank — laughed obnoxiously with his buddy.

“That was very rude,” a silky voice called out from a nearby tent and Deadlock stalked out. Ambulon froze, then started gathering the parts back into his box as quickly as possible. They needed to go back and be cleaned again, but he didn’t care if he was the one holding the brush, as long as he got away from here.

“What of it?” the bigger of the two tanks asked gruffly.

“The medical staff here,” Deadlock said as he prowled forward, “are _mine.”_ Ambulon’s fuel went cold and he froze again, unable to do more than keep himself from falling on his face a second time. His? _His?_ “So I suggest you apologize.”

The larger of the two bristled and reached for the small, dark officer.

It was over before Ambulon could blink his optics. He didn’t even see _what_ happened; only the impression of a blur, and then the large mech was on the ground, bleeding from a set of neat gashes in his leg that had severed the myomer connectors between his joints. He howled in pain, while Deadlock licked the mech’s energon from his claws.

The other mech’s optics went wide and he raised his hands in surrender, backing away.

“Apologize to the medic,” Deadlock growled.

“S-sorry. Won’t happen again.”

Ambulon slowly picked himself up off the ground when he realized both of them were waiting for a response from him. His hands shook, making the box rattle. Part of him wanted to stay on the ground, unobtrusive, but another, more rational part of him, informed him that he was already central to this drama, and if he was on his feet, he could — maybe — run.

“S-sure,” he managed, when Deadlock’s stare got more pointed and, subsequently, the larger Decepticon’s furtive, fearful looks to the smaller mech became more terrified. “Apology accepted.”

“Take your buddy to surgery,” Deadlock said quietly. “He’s going to need it if he’s going to walk again.”

“Yes, sir.” The Decepticon edged around Deadlock and picked up the still moaning tank, hauling him off.

_Don’t leave me alone!_

But they didn’t have a choice. Neither did Ambulon, but like a cornered petrorabbit he still tried to escape the hungry turbofox who was licking his chops. “Thank you,” he said politely, edging away. “I need to go reclean these for the others.”

“Later,” Deadlock’s gaze was hungry. “Or get a grunt to do it.”

“I am the grunt.” Ambulon edged further away. It was true; he was the newest built, the lowest ranked, the least experienced… The most vulnerable.

“Yeah?” Deadlock stalked forward, circling Ambulon. Admiring him. The medic froze, ventilations suddenly coming fast and frantic. “Don’t have to be. Don’t have to put up with idiots like that,” he nodded after the two departed tanks, “either. Think of it like a trade.”

 _And if I refuse?_ Ambulon wanted to ask, but the words stuck in his vocalizer and came out as a mere squeak.

Not getting a rejection, Deadlock smiled. He stepped closer, running his hands — claws — up Ambulon’s arm. He licked his lips, showing off his fangs, eying Ambulon’s frame hungrily…

“INCOMING WOUNDED!” The PA announced. “AMBULANCES AND CHOPPERS. ALL MEDICAL STAFF REPORT TO STATIONS!”

With Deadlock’s claws _right there,_ Ambulon didn’t dare take off running like he wanted to. “I have to…”

“Yeah,” the other mech sounded disappointed, but he stepped back, releasing his captive. “Go ahead. I’ll find you when it’s over.”

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End


End file.
